Hi Allegra,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 3: I’m actively figuring out what my interests are by trying one or more of them out in some way .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were achievement, conformity, and security.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was agreeableness.
You said your top three talents were analytic, artistic / spatial, and musical.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to applying (and getting accepted to) masters programs .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said get an A on my exam .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said A+!! feel accomplished .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said procrastination .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I get home from class, then I will complete 5+ practice problems .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in gmat .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt embarrassed when receiving critical feedback, and embarrassed when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being masters applications .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Health .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .
In one word, you said it made you feel warm .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
![]()
Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| |
| I was surprised by the physiological effects of grit in varying socioeconomic groups |
| Interest is an emotion |
| personality can change with time and situation |
| goals are future desired states |
| chunks of chunks |
| advice is future oriented whereas feedback focuses on past behaviours |
| stress can be enhancing |
| the brain is just a stupid little dog that can be easily trained |
| role models provide motivation and information |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
| |
| Matthew Ty |
| Hi Allegra! You gave such energy to every Grit Lab class that spread throughout the group. Loved your awesome colorful outfits and stories that you bring every class. I also appreciate how you would take initiative during group discussions, suggesting places we can go to have it as well as making sure our group had a good answer in case we get called. I really enjoyed your bubbly, energetic personality in our team.
For your discovery project, I loved how you were honest about what you thought about your project. A lot of times, the things we explore are not always things we want to continue in the future. However, it was fun to learn the process of making sour dough bread. It was also very insightful to hear about how you learned to be more comfortable with trying new things and reaching out to people to learn, which I can deeply relate to.
|
| Sarah Lavery |
| From day one, Allegra was energetic, engaging, and kind. She has mastered being a good listener and conversationalist. She consistently demonstrated intentionality – in her actions, words, and perfectly coordinated outfits :) ! This is something that I really admire because it is so easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of Penn (and oneself). My favorite memory of Allegra is how she would grab a tea during break and come back excited to share what the day’s flavor was. I so appreciate her outward facing love and invitation to grow in relationship. It was a joy to see her each Tuesday!
I learned a lot from Allegra’s presentation. Aside from the sourdough bread making process itself (the oldest starter is 4500 years old!!), I learned that it is okay to try something out, reflect, realize it is not for you, and decide to pursue other interests. I am someone who “likes to see things through” and have often sacrificed enjoyment for the satisfaction of completing something. I will take a page from Allegra’s book and be more intentional about what I spend my time on. |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.